The BrickFair convention is happening in D.C. this weekend, and so far there has been a few picture galleries on Flickr. Check out the ones from punkwalrus, Bosta, and william.ward. Meanwhile, if any attendees would like to fill us in on news, please get in contact with me or the blog and I’ll put up the good stuff for all to read.
August 25th is the 30th birthday of the LEGO minifigure. Here at The Brothers Brick, the minifig holds a very special place in our hearts — after all, we started out as a tiny little blog highlighting our favorite minifig finds.
To wish the minifig a happy 30th birthday, I’m pleased to announce that The Brothers Brick is hosting the GO MINIMAN GO Photo Contest. With awesome prizes like 10185 Green Grocer and four copies of 10190 Market Street, there’s some serious brick to be won. You can build a vignette or diorama and submit it in one of four categories that represent the decades in which minifigs have graced LEGO sets — from the 1970s through today.
The contest is open to everyone in the world who’s 18 years old as of August 1, 2008. You have until October 31, 2008 to submit your entries using our Contact Us page and the GO MINIMAN GO Photo Contest group pool on Flickr.
Here’s an example of the sort of scene you could build:
Entries will be judged by a Master Model Builder and Creative Director from LEGO, along with the Editor-in-Chief of The Brothers Brick (that would be me).
There are important rules for where and how to enter your LEGO creations in this contest, so please read the GO MINIMAN GO Photo Contest Rules carefully.
To see what else is going on to celebrate the 30th birthday of the LEGO minifig, check out GOMINIMANGO.com.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Why is this only open to people over the age of 18?
A: Although we welcome and encourage online participation on The Brothers Brick by anybody over the age of 13, we can’t ask for real names and addresses from people who are not yet adults. This is a legal requirement, and is not intended to discriminate against the talented teenage builders we frequently feature on the blog.
Q: What kind of creations are acceptable in each category?
A: How you interpret the four categories is entirely up to you. Let your imagination run wild! The only requirements are that your entry is a vignette or diorama and that it features a LEGO minifig.
This spindly-legged walker, by demdike, screams out the evilness of its owner. I’m loving the plethora of automated minions too. Hopefully the builder enters this in the BrickScience contest!
Reasonably Clever has announced their latest contest.
So get to building your Good Scientists, Bad Scientists, and especially those Mad Scientists!
Update: Zombie Apocafest 2008 went off smashingly at BrickCon 2008, October 2-5. Don’t miss our full coverage here on The Brothers Brick:
The pre-registration price for BrickCon 2008 goes up from $40 to $50 next Tuesday, August 5th. If you’re still thinking about joining Nannan, Josh, Keith, me, and lots of other Brothers Brick readers in Seattle this October, now’s the time to register!
If you’re still on the fence, here are a couple building challenges and contests to whet your appetite.
ChiefLUG Initiation
ChiefLUG will be extending initiation to anybody who builds a LEGO Viper from Battlestar Galactica. Here’s what ChiefLUG founding member Ryan “Chief” Wood has to say:
ChiefLUG is a superrad group of Lego fans dedicated to veggie platters, crazy group builds, being awesome, and pretending to be half as cool as KeithLUG. You might be familiar with our work.
To join ChiefLUG, you just have to build and bring a Viper, like the one above designed by Andrew Lee (more photos). Creative color variations are encouraged.
The Brothers Brick LEGO Zombie Apocafest
Not to be outdone by some upstart KeithLUG wannabe, KeithLUG itself, or a bunch of reasonably well-adjusted Train/Town builders, we at The Brothers Brick are sponsoring the first ever large-scale LEGO Zombie Apocalypse. Think Shaun of the Dead. Imagine Max Brooks’ World War Z in LEGO.
Naturally, we’ve recruited some of our favorite twisted LEGO minds to contribute, including Rocko™ and Justin Pratt:
There will be free swag for participants, of course, including prizes in various categories (such as Best Building, Best Vehicle, or Best Minifig) the quality and quantity of which will be determined at our whim between now and October.
To make the display easy to integrate, we’re asking participants to follow the modular building standards exemplified by Cafe Corner, Green Grocer, and Market Street. Well, basically anything featured on Brick Town Talk — with a zombie twist, of course.
Since I can’t find any documentation on what the “Cafe Corner standard” is, here’s my take:
(Please correct my description of the standard as necessary, and I’ll update this. I can post the standard separately too, if there’s interest.)
We’re talking about the apocalypse here, dear readers, so variations are certainly allowed. We’ll also do our best to integrate larger structures (like Justin’s bombed-out office building). We respect zombie diversity, certainly, but I really love the old Harry Potter troll as the basis for my own zombie horde.
And don’t forget survivors. And their multifarious modes of transportation.
So, if you’re coming to BrickCon, we’d love to include your contributions to The Brothers Brick LEGO Zombie Apocafest. Bring whole buildings, or partially destroyed buildings. Bring a truck. Bring just one zombie. Whatever. There’s room for one and all at the Zombie Apocafest!
We recently highlighted HKLUG’s LEGO Sport City display, with huge models of the venues we’ll be seeing in the Beijing Olympics next month.
Thanks to LEGO Ambassador and HKLUG member Tsang Yiu Keung (better known as Chiukeung), we have lots more information on the models, including behind-the-scenes photos.
Chiukeung gives a sense of just how large the display is:
Venues recreated in LEGO include the National Stadium (nicknamed “The Bird’s Nest”), National Aquatics Center (“Swimming Cube”), and Olympic Village.
The finished display is certainly impressive, but the behind-the-scenes photos reveal the true scale and impressive techniques that went into the LEGO Sport City.
The iconic National Stadium was designed by Ming, an architect by trade. It took him over 100 hours to complete, and is 128×154 studs in size (that’s about 40″ x 48″). The outer shell includes thousands of hinge plates.
The National Aquatics Center was built by Vincent Cheung over the course of 120 hours, and has a three-tier design with a cell-like structure in the transparent blue walls.
The Swimming Cube is illuminated with a fluorescent lamp inside, and measures 148 by 148 studs, or 46″ on each side.
Chiukeung built the Olympic Village, which is 160 x 224 studs (50″ x 70″). Chiukeung spent 100 hours on the project.
There’s lots more to see (56 pictures in all) in the HKLUG LEGO Sport City photoset on Flickr, including the Equestrian stadium by Hudson, Greek temple by Wai Kee, and various Chinese and European buildings by Andy. The mosaic was built by Hot, who also coordinated the entire project.
If you’re in Hong Kong, you can see this LEGO display for yourself at Grand Century Place between now and August 31, 2008.
Thanks again to HKLUG and Chiukeung for the behind-the-scenes info and photos!
For those curious to know what went on at the Toys R Us Midnight Sale last night, I took a ride to my local store to check out the frontline action. The Midnight Sale, hosted by participating Toys R Us stores, celebrates the release of new Star Wars Clone Wars toys, such as action figures, LEGO Star Wars sets, and other miscellaneous Clone Wars items.
Participants at the event received the limited edition holographic General Grievous action figure and Clone Wars poster for their purchases.
The picture below was taken last night at my local store near Dallas, and you can see how many people showed up. Inside the store was a marked section dedicated to all the brand new merchandise, and I’m excited to see that the LEGO Clone Wars sets dominated about a third of the space.
Almost half of the shopping carts I saw contained LEGO products. However, to my chagrin, Toys R Us has marked up prices on all of these new LEGO sets by $5-10. In the end I used coupons to purchase two Republic Gunships, definitely one of the must-have LEGO sets of the year.
If you missed this event, good news is that you didn’t miss too much.
Just today LEGO Shop at Home has listed all of the new Clone Wars sets fresh for sale. Don’t forget that your order qualifies for a free gold brick keychain with purchases over $75 until the end of July.
Here’s the full list of LEGO Star Wars Clone Wars sets available from the LEGO Shop:
For the past few months, LEGO fans have wondered what’s inside the exclusive secret Indiana Jones box available at Comic-Con (July 24-27) with a limited edition of 500. Just now, the set has been listed on Ebay with its contents, revealed to be the BrickMaster Indy jeep along with two natives minifigs and a small temple scene.
Furthermore, and to our surprise, an exclusive Clone Wars set is available as well with a limited edition of 1200. This kit includes full contents of the Hailfire Droid & Spider Droid set and the Droids Battle Pack in addition to five new clone minifigs and a special poster. Click on the picture below for more.
Via Brick Horizon
Fernando Correia of TechnicBRICKs and his fellow PLUG members got together recently and did something that I believe has never been done before: They donned scuba or snorkel gear and built LEGO sets underwater. “Okay,” you say, “I did that once at my grandma’s place in Orlando.”
Fine, but did you build the set underwater while it was still in the bag?! Hmm? Hmm? Did you? I think not.
Only slightly less impressive is Fernando building 8418 Mini Loader with full scuba gear on — though not in the original polybag:
(Thanks for the tip, Roger!)
Nickelodeon and LEGO are teaming up to host the “Built by Me” LEGO movie contest as part of the Nicktoons Network Animation Festival.
For your 2-minute (or less) movie animated with LEGO, you could win up to $25,000. w00t! Although Nicktoons is a kids’ network, I’ve taken a look at the rules, and the contest seems open to everybody.
You can download the Entry Form (632 KB PDF) and read the Rules & Regulations (1.1 MB PDF) on Nick.com.
Here’s the full press release:
CREATE A LEGO® ANIMATION FOR NICKTOONS NETWORK!
Nicktoons Network is working on the next Nicktoons Network Animation Festival…and they want YOUR animated short!
Are you a budding LEGO Filmmaker? Show off your talent by creating an animation using your LEGO brick collection! We’ll pick our favorite to be shown live at the Nicktoons Network Animation Festival in Los Angeles in October, and play it on www.nicktoonsnetwork.com/nnaf and LEGOclub.com. Plus, the Grand Prize winner will receive $25,000 to create an all-new animation for Nicktoons Network!
GRAND PRIZE: The “Built By Me” Movie Award!
The Grand Prize winning animation will be showcased at the Nicktoons Network Animation Festival and online. The winner will also receive $25,000 (twenty-five thousand dollars) to create a brand-new original animated short for Nicktoons Network using LEGO bricks and minifigures!FIRST PRIZE
One First Prize winner from each age category will receive a LEGO Premium Prize Pack!SECOND PRIZE
Two Second Prize winners from each age category will each receive a LEGO Prize Pack!CONTEST DETAILS
Create an original animated short 2 minutes long or less and send it to us. Entries must be submitted between July 15 and September 15 2008. All shorts must feature LEGO bricks, and you must own the rights to any music, sound and dialogue featured in your video.Contest is open to all ages. There are 2 categories: 17 and under, and 18 and older.
To enter the “Built By Me” Movie Contest you’ll need to download and complete the Entry Form and send it along with your animation.
WHERE TO SEND YOUR ANIMATION
Send your entry to:“Built By Me” Movie Contest
1515 Broadway, 38th Floor
New York, NY 10036Click here for contest details, rules & regulations, and movie-making tips to help you create your video!
Click here for more information about the Nicktoons Network Animation Festival!
ABOUT THE EVENT
The Nicktoons Network Animation Festival is back for its 5th year! Founded in 2004 to showcase the diversity of worldwide animation filmmaking, The Nicktoons Network Animation Festival is the largest multiplatform animation festival in North America. The festival features the best animated shorts from around the globe. Shorts selected for the festival have the chance to make it on-air, online and to be showcased at the live event in Los Angeles in October, 2008.Nicktoons Network currently reaches 50 million homes via cable, digital cable and satellite, and can be seen on Cablevision, Charter Communications, Comcast Cable, Cox Communications, DirecTV, DISH Network and Time Warner Cable.
BrickCon 2008 is coming up in less than three months — October 2-5 in my lovely city of Seattle, WA. If you haven’t registered yet, read all about the people, LEGO creations, and events in our past coverage of what I think is the coolest LEGO convention around. (Awesome brick-built BrickCon logo by Adam Hally.)
Important: The price for registration goes up from $40 to $50 on August 5, so if you know you’re coming, register now to save some money — to spend at the Brick Bazaar or LEGO Store, of course! ;-)
Anyway, one of the great things about LEGO conventions is amazing variety of stuff to do. Thomas Garrison and the rest of the BrickCon planning team are interested in hearing your ideas about presentations, seminars, round-tables, and other activities you’d like to see at BrickCon this October. For more info, read on…
BrickCon 2008 is looking for any talks, roundtables, and special activities you would like to see at the Con this year.
This year we have two classrooms adjacent to the exhibition hall with real, hard walls so we anticipate being able to program presentations/activities for up to twenty people during public hours or other activities. Additionally, public hours have been further reduced from last year, leaving more programming time for events requiring larger spaces.
Past talks have included manufacturing custom parts, an introduction to LDraw, and slideshows of LEGOLAND (insiders’ and outsiders’ views), among many others.
Roundtables, or moderated discussions, have included sorting, Moonbase standards and design, landscaping, and anything that someone can think of.
Activities already planned for this year include the Dirty Brickster, a draft, and speed and blind builds.
All we need for more talks, roundtables, and activities are ideas and people to run with them. Projectors and a computer will be available (although bringing your own laptop ensures compatibility). All spaces can be configured with tables and chairs as desired.
Any registered attendee who would like to run a presentation or activity should e-mail proposals or questions to Thomas Garrison (the three letters Tee Double-U Ess AT morfydd DOT net–please mention BrickCon in the subject). If possible, please include a possible title, brief description for the event program, and any time constraints or facility requirements. Events are typically scheduled to run up to fifty minutes but can be scheduled for more or less time.
Our hard deadline for proposals is September 8. This gives Thomas time to make a schedule and get everything into our printed program. Earlier is better.
BrickCon is an annual adult LEGO hobbyist convention and exhibition in Seattle. BrickCon 2008 will be October 2-5, 2008, in the Seattle Center Exhibition Hall. For more information and online registration, visit: http://www.brickcon.org
I hope to see lots of you this October in Seattle!
LEGO employees in the UK have put together tens of thousands of clone troopers to raise money for the National Autistic Society. As you can see, this puts Moko’s golden army to shame:
More details on Gizmodo. (Thanks for the link, Jesus Diaz and Jeramy Cooke!)